Cuban Mela fires up at Camden Forge

Onstage before a giant Cuban flag, a sprawling line-up of London’s finest – trumpeter Nick Smart and his Trogon project; trombonist Justin Thurgur, late of Bellowhead, and his crew – showcased material from forthcoming albums; in demand rumbero Gerardo de Armas & Su Rumbache(featuring a line up of erstwhile bandleaders including vocalist Ednar ‘Picki’ Landa and timbales Godfather Roberto Pla, along with guitarist Chris Montague of Troyka and the Russian-born rumbera Olga Bagley) delivered a rootsy mix of Afro-Cuban chants and heavy duty percussion driven by Oreste ‘Sambroso’ Noda Fernandez.

After which they were joined by MOBO-winning British star Denys Baptiste on tenor sax and on double bass, elder statesman Gary Crosby – who later told me that, as a child growing up in coastal Jamaica, he could see Cuba from his bedroom. Aided by classically-trained British Nigerian pianist Jonathan Idiagbonya and a chant-a-long, hands-in-the-air crowd, it was an inventive jam with roots in Africa and the Caribbean ­– and a union that felt like start of something big.

If there is such a thing as the short straw for improvising musicians it may well be a booking in the days immediately after the London Jazz Festival. The growth of the event in the past decade surely leaves some punters in post-LJF ‘time out’ mode, sufficiently satisfied to forgo a concert by an artist of Terri Lyne Carrington’s stature. Several rows of empty seats in one half of the club is thus not the most edifying of sights for the drummer-composer-producer who has recently delivered the second instalment of her excellent Mosaic Project, Love & Soul.

However the grade-A mixed gender band, in line with the equality agenda of that latest work, hits the ground running and within moments Carrington’s superlative blend of drive and stealth underlines why she landed gigs with the Waynes and Herbies of this world at a strikingly early stage of her career. If the 1980s, the decade of her emergence, seems an eon away she reminds the audience that one of the significant composers of that time, and another one of her collaborators, pianist Geri Allen, wrote some great ‘new standards’ by way of a reprise of Allen’s gorgeous ‘Unconditional Love’. The sextet enriches the swirling harmony by incisive voicings from the horns, Arnetta Johnson (trumpet) and Lakecia Benjamin (alto sax) and discreet motifs from Ben Eunson’s guitar, while the nucleus of Carrington, double bassist Josh Hari and pianist Helen Sung really nails the rhythmic centre. The latter in particular, last seen at this same venue with the Mingus Big Band, grows impressively throughout the performance and it is fitting that the second set closes with her own piece ‘H-Town’, during which the bluesy sophistry of the arrangement, all sharp chordal stabs and bursts of rolling groove, trills to an irresistible climax. The most significant thing to occur in the interim is the arrival of vocalist Charenee Wade, which effectively leads to something of a concert within the concert. Enjoying a greater spotlight this year by way of the release of her excellent Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson tribute album, The Offering, Wade certainly has something of an artist on the verge of premiership promotion. Her opening salvo, a searing reprise of ‘Home Is Where The Hatred Is’, sends a very perceptible tremor of excitement around the house to make the unoccupied pews irrelevant.

Back in the spring, when in London for his appearance at the nearby Wigmore Hall, bassist Christian McBride described Wade as ‘the second coming of Betty Carter’ and the hype is quickly justified. She has great phrasal ingenuity, an ability to skate right on the edge of a key signature, to push ‘out’ while staying ‘in’, and an emotional engagement with the material that renders every word believable, to the extent that when she delivers the hammer blow of the anti-drug lyric, ‘home is where the needle marks’, there is momentous pathos amid the soulfulness of the music. The other highlight from the songs drawn from Wade’s album is ‘Ain’t No Such Thing As A Superman’, during which the singer’s cheerleading skills and general desire to make audience participation more choice than chore come into their own. Topping all of this, however, is a quite majestic version of ‘Simply Beautiful’, in which the tantalising sensuality of Al Green’s original is retained and enhanced by Wade’s flickering subtleties amid the seamless transitions from ballad to backbeat. Had the gig taken place during the London Jazz Festival, the applause may have been louder.

Liane Carroll Trio wraps up LJF in fine style at 606

Consummate performer and every singer’s vocal idol, Liane Carroll, sidles up to the piano, still in coat and scarf, and starts chatting and joking with her audience about the ‘Cassandra incident’ earlier in the week. She teases that no-one’s getting their money back tonight, because she’s here to sing and has a long list of numbers she wants to do for us. But it quickly becomes clear there is no list and the rest of her trio, Carroll’s husband Roger Carey on bass guitar and Enzo Zirilli on drums, must wait for her next intro before they know what tune she has in mind.

Arguably Carroll’s greatest gift is how she brings every shade of emotion into play; we alternately gasped (‘Caravan’ in a rapid 12/8), laughed (Tom Waits’ ‘Take Me Home You Silly Boy’), sang (Carol King’s ‘You’ve Got a Friend’) and cried (‘Here’s To Life’). She told stories, cracked bawdy jokes, interrupted herself mid-song with little asides, and shouted the odd instruction off-microphone to Roger and Enzo (“stretch it out at the end!”). Zirilli, for his part, kept a close watch for Liane changing the feel, tempo or even tune on the piano and, to his credit, seemed able to harness an almost telepathic relationship with the singer, matching his drum fills and textures in minute detail to the mood she was after. Carey plays bass guitar with an effortless dexterity, slapping and tickling the fat strings to produce some incredible solos, taking songs like ‘Green Dolphin Street’ into a whole new realm.

Among the devout fans that turn up to practically every gig she does (me among them from now on) were a slew of fresh converts struggling to comprehend just why it was they hadn’t seen her live before. Needless to say she quickly sold out of merchandise to these new acolytes, offering profuse apologies to the long line of people who left for home empty-handed. It’s that kind of regard for her audience, along with the preceding exquisiteness of her performance, that marks Carroll out as the passionate pro she most assuredly is.

James Pearson and WordTheatre presents ‘And All That Jazz’

WordTheatre, a company specialising in live readings of stories by actors, presented ‘And All That Jazz’ at the St. James Theatre as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival. With a total of nine actors on stage, the evening comprised extracts from letters, poems, essays and anecdotes, with James Pearson – leader of the Ronnie Scott’s All Stars - providing an improvised piano score.

Early in the show, Lucy Cohu read a piece written by Anne Shaw Faulkner for the August 1921 issue of the Ladies' Home Journal. Posing Faulkner’s question “Does jazz put the sin in syncopation?” Cohu went on to present a stern outline of jazz’s “evil influence on the young people of today”. Jack Shepherd then gave an evocative retelling of the time a teenage Billy Taylor saw Jelly Roll Morton play in 1937. Billy and his friends, who were into Lester Young and studying Schoenberg and Bartók, went to old Jelly’s club for a few laughs, but were quickly singled out as young hipster upstarts. Jelly turned to them from the piano and said, “you punks can’t play this!” before launching into a big swinging ragtime number. Billy and his pals had to agree with him.

Following poems by Frank Marshall Davis and Ntozake Shange, the first half concluded with Ginny Holder, Okezie Morro and Polly Gibbons reading ‘The Reunion’ by Maya Angelou. Angelou’s powerful short story tells of a former maid turned pianist, who sees the white daughter of her previous employer in a jazz club with a black man. A highly charged unpacking of the emotional backstory follows, which was brought to life by a stirring central performance from Holder.

Throughout, Pearson provided a well-judged bluesy soundtrack, giving plenty of space to the actors. Often subtly referencing the tunes and musicians mentioned in the texts, he also knew exactly when to pull back and let silence lend an added emphasis. The show did, however, have its moments of unevenness, in many ways due to the diverse range of material. The inclusion of a couple of sung numbers felt like something of an afterthought and some texts fitted the overarching narrative better than others. Elsewhere the odd American twang would slip back occasionally into British intonation.

The highlight of the night came right at the end as Joseph Marcell (known to many from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) stole the show with his reading of Louis Armstrong’s reply to a piece of fan mail from a Marine stationed in Vietnam. Armstrong’s letter of 1967 is warm, heartfelt and hilarious, and was delivered with great panache by Marcell. Signing off, Satchmo wrote to the soldier: “And now I'll do you, just like the farmer did the potato – I'll plant you now and dig you later.”

Legends gather in somber tribute to Kenny Wheeler at Cadogan Hall

We were promised a smorgasbord of jazz royalty at this gig, and we certainly got it: great musicians, great tunes, great arranging and great playing. What’s not to like? It was something to do with the vibe: not only has Kenny Wheeler passed, but John Taylor too. They are sorely missed, and perhaps all those on stage were still going through their grieving processes, leaving the overall mood understandably sad. They played tunes Kenny liked such as ‘Foxy Trot’, they played tracks he wrote like ‘Nobody’s Song But My Own’ and ‘Wintersweet’, and they improvised like crazy – especially the free jazz trio Foxes Fox led by Evan Parker, who asked trumpeter Percy Pursglove to join them on stage for a short set. There was everything from Ralph Towner playing solo acoustic guitar to die for, through to Nick Smart’s trumpet choir, who came out on the upper balcony and cleansed our palates from time to time with fabulously close-harmony versions of Kenny tunes.

Once you got past the sense that it all felt a bit like a wake, you could sit back and enjoy Norma Winstone’s winsome interpretations of some pretty heavy tunes that recalled her albums from the 1970s with Wheeler and Taylor on ECM, led by Dave Holland impeccable on bass, Martin France subtle as ever on drums, the spirited Mark Lockhart on saxes, John Parricelli sounding effortless on guitar and Nikki Iles playing some divine Taylor-infused solos on piano. There was a certain amount of hesitation on Winstone and Holland’s part, as if neither of them had quite decided beforehand who was really compering the gig, but between them they nevertheless conveyed their sincere and lasting admiration for Britain’s favourite (adopted) jazz legend. They ushered on the London Vocal Project for a couple of great numbers from one of Wheeler’s last albums, Mirrors, namely ‘Humpty Dumpty’ and ‘The Lover Mourns’, and later Lockheart was joined on stage by Stan Sulzmann, who also played on the incredible 1990 albumMusic for Large & Small Ensembles, to create a two-sax line up facing Nick Smart and fellow trumpeter Henry Lowther for the final few numbers.

Of all the musicians, it’s probably Smart who now carries the Wheeler mantle more than most, not only as a sympathetic trumpeter with a similar talent for creating incredible tunes, but also as Head of Jazz at the Royal Academy of Music, a department where Wheeler was involved as patron of the Junior Jazz course for many years. Holland was the most recent artist-in-residence there from 2013-2015, so had been working closely with Wheeler right up until his death in September 2014. They left the final word to Wheeler, the audience pin-drop-silent as a recording of his unaccompanied flugelhorn soared into the concert hall, sublime and never to be repeated, as if he was playing to us still from the other side.